Negativity is contagious. It’s all too easy to complain about everything that goes wrong and this can quickly spread to others. Fortunately there is a simple trick that can be used to eliminate negativity; simply don’t say negative words. Aiming for positive remarks helps people to get energised. Rather than looking for blame, seek opportunities to improve and progress forward.

Here are some examples of negative statements that people commonly use:

• Don’t do that
• We can’t do it
• It can’t be done
• We don’t do such thing
• It is against our policy
• We have never done this before
• It has never been done
• No one knows how to do this
• You don’t know how this works
• The management is clueless
• The staff are clueless
• They sit there all day and do nothing
• No one cares

These statements do not help and are sometime stated as a reflex reaction rather than with an appropriate thought. Sometimes they become a habit and it is important to eliminate them as bad habits.

This simple two stage exercise helps to increase the awareness of delegates about this issue and helps them to address it. It is ideal for delegates who work closely together or are part of the same team.

This is an entertaining exercise encouraging delegates to think on the spot, make decisions and self-organise to complete a task. It is ideal for teambuilding and leadership courses to show the value of communication from all members and how a leader can coordinate the activities and information exchange to significantly increase the performance of the group as a whole.

This exercise is ideal for team building and negotiation where delegates learn to share their resources and also negotiate with each other in a competitive environment. They will learn that cooperation can be much more effective than direct competition or being difficult.

In this exercise, delegates practice working together towards a common goal; making the tallest free standing tower given simple materials. The exercise is competitive and requires creativity as well as good leadership, division of task, resource management and decision making.

Research carried out on many teams in large corporations show that they use suboptimal solutions when dealing with conflicts in teams. Every time there is a conflict in the team, they respond in a way that comes to undermine the team rather than empower it. This article provides guidance on how to avoid bad responses to conflicts and instead use better a better approach known as Constructive Collaboration.

This exercise helps delegates to understand the importance of several key principles, such as “Parkinson’s Law” as well as managing their performance in the face of change or increasingly challenging environments. It is also useful for teamwork, decision making, leadership and creativity. You can use this exercise to teach “Parkinson’s Law” in a time management course.

This is a physical exercise with an aim to encourage team work and collective problem solving. Use the variations to adjust the difficulty. It also highlights the importance of self-organisation and the necessity for leadership when confronted with challenging tasks.

You can use this exercise to explore teamwork, leadership and the ability to work under pressure and cooperatively to solve a problem.

This is a simple yet challenging exercise which puts pressure on a group to solve a problem as the clock is ticking. To successfully survive the task, the group must learn to work together quickly and efficiently.

This is a physical exercise that encourages self-organisation within a team when confronted with a challenge. You can test the group to see how quickly they can come up with a self-assigned leader who would then go on to coordinate the group’s activity to increase their efficiency.

The purpose of this exercise is to encourage delegates to share their feelings about the organisation they are in. Using a systematic approach, delegates get to talk about their positive and negative thoughts so that issues are raised as well as points that make people feel proud to be part of the organisation. It is ideal for team building and also for leadership to better understand what goes on in the minds of their staff. This exercise is ideal for people who work together or are part of the same organisation.

This exercise helps delegates to practice focusing, paying attention to detail and memorising. It can be easily customised to suite specific needs or even turned into a competition to address team work and leadership skills (see variations). It is ideal for all ages.

This is a fairly flexible exercise you can use to improve delegates’ creativity, decision making and team working skills. Effectively you get the groups to design a game in the given time and later evaluate the process they went through. You can use a number of variations to customise this exercise based on your needs.

This is a creative exercise which can be used to explore topics such as communication skills, leadership, problem solving decision making and perspective taking. Effectively, delegates must work together to sort a sequence of images by enquiring from each other and collectively decide on the best outcome.